River agency selects Crowell as chairman

Gene Crowell started working for his city's utilities in 1957 and remembers working in downtown Shelbyville when power service trucks were replaced with "boats to pull meters because of the flooding" of the Duck River, he said.

Those problems are gone since Normandy Dam was built in the early 1970s, but now the river agency's board faces the opposite problem of growing demand for water supplies when climateologists predict more severe and longer drought, according to discussion among agency leaders at Henry Horton State Park.

Bedford County Circuit Court Clerk Thomas Smith nominated Crowell to succeed Freddie Stacey, a home construction contractor in Marshall County. Stacey had made it known that he would not accept another term as chairman, in part because of increased responsibilities for the chairman. Twice a month, Stacey had traveled to the agency's Depot Street offices in Shelbyville. As a result, the now-former chairman suggested the board have a chairman who lives in Shelbyville, and one who's retired.

Crowell was general manager of Shelbyville's utilities system from 1979 to 2001 and is aware of the agency's roots in controversy that resulted in a two-dam project being restricted to one reservoir. Litigation against the Tennessee Valley Authority ended construction of a new dam at Columbia and forced removal of what had been built.

Had it not been for Crowell's good-natured vote of "no" against his own election, he would have been unanimously elected chairman of the agency. His feigned protest came with the admonition that such boards are supposed to elect someone who was absent.

Other matters facing the river agency were addressed Thursday night by Executive Director Doug Murphy, who reviewed continuing steps toward resolving water supply issues during drought and how to address the agency's other chief responsibility, oversight of water quality in the five-county region of Bedford, Coffee, Marshall, Maury and Hickman counties.

The Duck River Agency Technical Advisory Committee, a panel of utility system managers serving customers in the watershed, is to be held next week at agency headquarters.